Standards for the purity of water in rivers, lakes and groundwater are continually increasing in response to legislation, regulation, and community demand. These increasingly stringent standards place a burden on the producers of wastewaters for example, users of pools and spas, agribusiness operators and others, to discharge wastewater which does not introduce prohibited levels of contaminants or chemicals into the surroundings and groundwater.
Due to the strict regulations, maintenance of water purity by the use of chemical additives such as chlorine in pools and spas has become less desirable.
It is common under many state and federal regulatory regimes that any unauthorized discharge of organic or inorganic waste, or bacteriologically contaminated materials, which exceed regulatory levels must be immediately reported to the authorities.
Although transportation of contaminated wastewater to off-site authorized disposal facilities is permitted, such transportation is in most circumstances prohibitively expensive especially where large volumes of wastewater are involved. If the contaminated wastewater is categorized as hazardous, prior authorization and permitting may be required.
Rural, residential and agribusiness sources of wastewater which are not connected with city sewers are particularly in need of low cost wastewater treatment systems, especially systems which may operate on relatively small volumes of wastewater. However, even those wastewater generators connected to city sewers are increasingly being required to pretreat wastewater prior to discharge.
Wastewater contains biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), ammonia nitrates, phosphorous, bacteria and virus. Prior art systems have introduced chemical agents, particularly chlorine, ozone, or a combination thereof, to oxidize and purify the wastewater. Inorganic contaminants are oxidized to less soluble oxides and organic components are converted to carbonaceous residuals and carbon dioxide. Conventional aerators and injectors utilize pressure and velocity changes of the wastewater flow to introduce air, oxygen or ozone as a vast quantity of small bubbles ranging in size from about 40 microns to 0.5 microns in diameter. However, prior art injectors typically require high pressures or high flow rates to achieve effective aeration.
What is needed is a wastewater and liquid treatment aeration system which reduces objectionable contaminants to an acceptable level and which may be economically operated at slow flow rates or low pressures.